Has Labour deported and removed 50,000 people since coming into office?published at 11:02 GMT
11:02 GMT
Gerry Georgieva
BBC Verify researcher
Image source, Mentorn MediaImage caption,
Fiona Bruce hosted a BBC Question Time immigration special from Dover
BBC Question Time ran an immigration special last night – you can watch it here on BBC iPlayer – which saw Immigration Minister Mike Tapp clash with Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf over the number of people deported from the UK.
Tapp said Labour has “deported and removed nearly 50,000” people but Yusuf argued “a very tiny fraction of those are actual deportations”.
There were 48,560, external , external“returns”, external between 1 July 2024 and 31 October 2025, external.
These figures are broken down into either “enforced” returns or “voluntary” returns.
Enforced returns might involve an immigration officer escorting someone on to a flight out of the UK, and would include deportations – but there is no publicly available breakdown for this specific category.
Some voluntary returns might involve the government – for, example through financial assistance to help someone with travel or resettlement costs – but in other cases people will have left the UK independently without the government’s knowledge at the time.
Only 12,529 of the total 48,560 returns were, external , external“enforced”, with 36,031 being recorded as “voluntary”.
BBC Verify has created a migration tracker where you can explore the latest figures.